Fully Integrated High Sensitivity Uncooled Terahertz Receiver Array

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant: This proposed project is to prove feasibility of a compact, low-cost array for use in medical terahertz (THz) research. Though at its infancy, terahertz technology for medical and pharmaceutical applications is being intensively investigated. Terahertz radiation, electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths between microwaves and infrared light, is commanding the attention of medical researchers since it injects a lot less energy into biological tissue than x-rays. Terahertz systems may be tuned to highlight specific types of tissue such as skin caners. The terahertz region of the electromagnetic spectrum is between 0.1 to 10 THz (1 THz = 10[12] Hz). Existing terahertz sensing techniques rely heavily on mechanically scanned single-pixel or small receiver arrays, which are limited by their low data rate, mechanical reliability, cost, weight and feed losses. This project proposes to develop a fully integrated, high sensitivity, uncooled, terahertz sensing array, which features a unique integrated high gain, micro antenna system coupled to ultra-low noise uncooled thermoelectric bolometer detectors fabricated on top of low-power CMOS readout electronics. The proposed array will overcome the limitations of existing technology, scale to high pixel count arrays (equal to or >40K pixels), and have a noise equivalent power (NEP) of less than 1pW/Hz at 300K (room temperature). On this project, AME will team with researchers at the Honeywell Laboratories, the corporate research center for Honeywell International, who have pioneered the research and development of microbolometers.